[Dailydrool] Whining/Barking/Talking dog

[Kathleen Lewis]

Oswald is a professional whiner.  He whines any morning we are getting
up too slowly for him.  My husband and I are late night people, so we
rarely get up before 10 am and Oz is very used to this and happy about
it as he loves to sleep, but since the daylight savings time, he's ready
to get up every morning at 9.  Fortunately if we ignore him for about 10
minutes he'll go back to sleep until we are ready to get up.  He also
whines if he wants to go out, he whines if he wants to play and he
whines if he wants food, or for that matter, for you to try to feed him
and then him sit/stand there looking at you like you're crazy for 5
minutes before he finally decides that kibble is an acceptable form of
food.    

He also barks a lot when he's around his cousin dogs (2 very tall
Rhodesian ridgebacks and a mini schnauzer).  It's like he wants them to
play with him, but he doesn't play when they come near, he just barks
like he's trying to say "Come steal my toy, I dare you!". It's really
funny because the other dogs won't come near him.  They know he's the
boss and he's not going to give up his toy, but usually start barking
back.  I haven't seen it, but apparently he can trap them in the kitchen
of the in-law's house by lying in the hallway and giving them the look
and a slight growl while just laying there.  He's very nice to them
usually, but I think he was just trying to show them who's the boss.

 My favorite form of his communication is when he wants to play with a
person.  He has one form of playing and it's similar to the way he plays
with dogs because he wants me to try to take his rawhide away.  It
usually starts in the bedroom, where he hides his rawhides in the closet
under the mess on the floor.  He barks and barks and barks like he wants
you to find his bone, but he hides them so well that we can never find
them (I guess having a messy closet will do that ;) ).  Soon enough I
have to come into the room and encourage him to get his own bone and
sometimes he'll drop it once or twice for me to throw and him retrieve,
but apparently he thinks that gets old really quickly.  Then the second
part of the game starts, he starts chewing the bone and then it's time
to start barking again.  I know this means he wants me to try to take it
from him, but once I come near him he starts growling.  At first I
thought he was being aggressive like he was going to bite me, but
eventually we learned that the growl noise is basically just a pre-bark
noise.  Once I keep trying to take the rawhide away from him he starts
barking with it in his mouth and running away from me.  This is
especially funny because it's one of the only times you'll ever catch
this guy running (unless it's after a cat he's stalking on a walk).  He
will continue to bark with his rawhide in his mouth, running all over
the apartment trying to get away from me until eventually I let him win.
If I give up before he's ready to quit, he'll just sit there and look at
me and drop the rawhide and start barking at me again, at the same time
guarding the rawhide very closely.  If I come near him he grabs the
rawhide back and the running around barking with his mouth full starts
again.  Eventually whenever he's ready to quit playing he'll chew on it
some more and off to a new hiding spot in the closet or maybe on the bed
under the pillows or a blanket (this is a good spot because we don't
keep our bed made, so we don't notice it until we are in the bed
covering up).  It's a really fun game to play, now that I've learned all
of his rules.  I guess he's doing well with his slave training after
only a little more than a year of owning us.  I'm so glad he has though.
I don't know what I did without him all these years.  

 

--Kat, owned by Oswald

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